


This Is Your Sword

by ash818



Series: Legacy [7]
Category: Arrow (TV 2012)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-12-28
Updated: 2016-12-23
Packaged: 2018-05-09 22:27:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 18,733
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5557898
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ash818/pseuds/ash818
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do you like Italian?” Oliver said. Three nights later, Felicity sat down at a white-draped table with him, warm and golden in the candlelight. Then his phone rang, and Sara gave him news about his sister that would change everything.</p><p> </p><p>  <b>Note:</b></p><p>This story has been discontinued. If you're still curious about where it might have gone, chapter three is the entire rough draft of the remainder.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

On October 22, 2014, Felicity goes to meet a small passenger jet at Bayfront Airport. She has just shut the car door behind her when the hatch opens, and her fingers twist anxiously in her scarf.

Dig leads the way down the steps to the tarmac, looking utterly collected as he only does on the job.

Behind him, Thea and Roy support each other all the way down the steps. Thea burns with directionless anger, and from the way he moves Felicity suspects Roy has taken a beating.

Their feet touch ground level, and she keeps watching the open hatch of the jet. Oliver does not come through it.

She hurries over, her heels loud on the concrete, and when Dig meets her eyes she knows what he is about to tell her.

“Where’s Oliver?”

He reaches for her outstretched arm and cradles her elbow in his hands. “I’m so sorry. He’s not coming back.”

She knows better, even as she asks the question: “You left him in Nanda Parbat?”

He shakes his head. “He fought the Demon’s Head. He lost.”

Thea has come within earshot. Felicity asks no more questions.

Numb, she leads the three of them to the car.

 

 

 

Elaine Michaels Diggle was born at 1:26 am on October 5, on exactly the date the doctor circled on the calendar all those months ago.

“You know what you are, little bit?” Lyla whispered to the bundle in her arms. “Wonderful. Magnificent. Glorious.” She let out a somewhat loopy giggle. “Punctual.”

Dig kissed her head. “Strong work, baby. On time and under budget.”

Oliver took one look at the brand new person in the blankets, and then another at the fond smile on Felicity’s face. Something settled in his chest. Just eased down gently and rested there.

Maybe it was the right time.

Team Arrow was kicking ass and taking names, on good terms with law enforcement, and working in such perfect sync that neither he nor Dig had sustained anything worse than a bruise in two months.

Oliver had already won some significant victories in the legal battle for the Queen family assets. Given that Isabel Rochev was a psychotic domestic terrorist with a bizarre agenda, the court found her takeover extremely suspect. With his shares back in his name, Oliver had no interest in being CEO again; he had never really been qualified. He was content to be on the Board, representing the family, and incredibly grateful to have Walter back in the office - especially since one of the first things Walter did was offer Applied Sciences to Felicity.

“I have a staff,” she said that night, unpacking boxes in Team Arrow’s brand new headquarters. “Four of them. They have to do what I say.”

Oliver could not help smiling. “With great power…”

“Comes lattes on demand.” Then she gave him her best supervillain eyebrows. But after less than a second, she broke into happy giggles. “I’ve been doodling with all these programs on the side, and now I get to expand them and see if they work in real life, and I bet I can integrate Curtis’ work - he’s on my wavelength or something, I swear - and we are going to blow some satellite engineers’ minds.”

Oliver could have kissed her right then, she looked so happy and proud.

Then she dropped a box on her foot - “oh my God, ow, what is in here, bowling balls?” - and he went to help.

They were setting up shop in the basement of the high rise building where Dig and Lyla had just opened their new offices. “I’ve been taking orders for twenty years,” Dig said back in May, smoothing out the creases in his very last pay stub from officially guarding Oliver. “Maybe it’s time to be my own boss.”

Panoptic Security was a limited liability company founded on a loan from Oliver, a ream of paperwork filed by Felicity, and the strong recommendation of everyone who had ever worked with John Diggle. Lyla quit ARGUS to go into partnership with him, and in the first week of September, they hired their first staff member.

“Failed the background check,” Roy said over a celebratory beer. “Still got the job.” He raised the glass to Dig and Lyla. “Thanks, guys.”

New starts all around.

Dig had a point, Oliver was beginning to believe. Whatever “right time” he had been waiting for, this was it.

That was why, in the hospital hallway, with a smile still lingering and a flutter just south of his diaphragm, Oliver said, “Do you like Italian?”

Three nights later, she sat across a white linen-draped table from him, warm and golden by candlelight.

“So maybe I was wrong,” he said, because with her looking like that, his own words from less than a year ago sounded like obvious lunacy. _Can’t be with someone I could really care about?_ Well, there he was, with her for the evening. He cared. It was done.

A genuine smile spread across her face, even as she tilted her head playfully and said, “Did that just hurt you to say?”

He smiled back, but he wanted no games tonight. “You know, it didn’t.”

Then his phone rang.

He did not jump. He reacted to a sudden loud interruption like a trained professional. He did not jump. “Sorry, I forgot to silence it,” he murmured, reaching for his pocket.

“Oh, were we supposed to?” Felicity said, reaching for her purse. “Because we could get a - well, you know, our line of work is kind of - but yeah. Silent is good.”

But Oliver glanced at the screen before he swiped the call straight to voicemail. “Sara?”

Felicity’s back straightened warily. “Your whole face looks like uh-oh.”

He gestured vaguely at the doorway. “I’m going to…”

She nodded, perhaps a little too eager to be accommodating. “Yes. Go. I’ll be here.”

He slipped out into the alley to take the call, because not once had he heard good news from Sara on this line. “What’s wrong?”

He heard a quick intake of breath, like she was bracing herself, and then: “Ollie, Thea’s here.”

“Here,” he repeated blankly, because the word did not mean much coming from a globetrotting Assassin. “Where is here?”

The next thing out of Sara’s mouth was a collection of syllables he recognized, but which could not possibly be what she meant. “Nanda Parbat.”

Oliver frowned. “What did you say?”

“She might be meeting with Ra’s al Ghul as we speak.”

“What are you talking about? She’s in Italy. She texted me the other day.” Her location was all she had texted him. His few attempts at further conversation, she shut down pretty quickly. _i don’t really want to talk ollie. i’m tired of hearing you lie._

There was a pause, as though Sara were hastily revising her assessment of the whole situation. “I’m sorry to say it, but I doubt she’s been to Italy at all.” He heard her take a slow, deep breath. “I know this must not make much sense to you, but I need you to listen, okay?”

He nodded, waited. Realized how stupid that was and said, “All right, go ahead.”

“She came here with one of our youngest,” Sara said, and he could practically hear her forcing herself to take her time. “She’s calling him Chase, but that’s not his name. I think they met in Corto Maltese; at least, that was his last assignment.  Ollie, she knows what we are, and she asked if we would teach her.”

His brain shorted out, and he said, “Teach her what?”

There was a pause, as if she had not expected to have to explain. “To do the things we do.”

“That’s–” There is no word for what that is. It’s impossible. It’s ridiculous. “That’s insane.”

“I think Ra’s is going to offer to initiate her.”

Silence.

“I’ve tried to talk her out of this, believe me. But I think she needs to hear it from someone else.”

Through numb lips, Oliver said, “These days I am the last person she listens to.”

“You’re her brother,” Sara said gently. “She’ll listen.”

 

 

 

The worst thing about the end of the world is that the damn thing keeps spinning afterwards.

Felicity dresses her best, makes herself up carefully, and steps into the elevator at Queen Consolidated with her head held high. Two days of neglected reports and messages wait on her desk.  Projects did not poof out of existence. Deadlines did not slide off the calendar.

Oliver is dead, but she has a meeting this afternoon.

The elevator doors slide open at Applied Sciences. Curtis stands to greet her, and she accepts the neat folder he hands her.

“We missed you here the past couple days,” he says. “How’s that head cold?”

She clears her throat. “Let’s get started.”

She manages to focus for most of the morning, until Walter summons her to his office to discuss pushing back the deadline on the satellite communications project.

Three steps into the corner office - Oliver’s office, this was his once, and he sat right there and frowned fiercely at fundamentals analyses until she texted him a silly pun and he looked up through that useless glass wall (and what even was the point of those walls other than to catch each other staring) and a smile curled just one side of his mouth, and he was right there -

Walter reaches tentatively for her arm. “Are you all right, Ms. Smoak?”

“Fine,” she says, reaching up to adjust her glasses and blinking hard a couple of times. “I’ve just been a little under the weather, and absolutely anything can set off my allergies this week. Sorry.”

He furrows his brow at her and gestures to the chair in front of  his desk. “Have a seat.”

Then he sets a box of Kleenex down in front of her, and at this small kindness her eyes burn again.

Walter cares about Oliver too, and he will never know what happened to him.

That night, the dreams begin.

They are, for the most part, boringly normal dreams. Oliver needed those fundamentals analyses on his desk by two o’clock, and it is two-fifteen. A pumpkin spice latte waits for her on the conference room table, and she knows, with the certainty of dreams, that it was Oliver who put it there. She sits at her workstation in the lair, and behind her she hears the rhythmic clang of barbells or the frenetic _thud-thud-thud_ on the wing chun dummy. He is unseen, but always comfortably present.

One night she dreams of bare, scarred skin and a warm mouth pressed to her neck, and he is everywhere, arms wrapped around her and the smell of him filling her senses. He is half golden, half shadow - warm as a Rembrandt - and there is nothing else in all that velvety darkness but him.

She wakes with her thighs pressed tightly together, and then she rolls deeper into the pillows and cries herself back to sleep.

“When do we have to - you know, inform the authorities?” she asks Dig the next day, wrapped in a blanket on his sofa

“What would we even tell them?” he says wearily, sinking down on the cushions next to her.

“How did you explain to the pilot that his passenger list had changed?”

“We didn’t. Oliver paid extra to see that his name didn’t make the manifest.”

“God, the Queens don’t even do broke like the rest of us do.”

“Lyla suggested we report him missing,” Dig says, leaning back and crossing his arms. “Then the legal situation would eventually…” – he shifts uncomfortably – “take care of itself.”

Felicity glares at the crown molding. “You mean they’d declare him dead. Again.”

“They’ll investigate, they’ll come up empty, and that’ll be the end of it,” Dig says heavily. “If we file a false report and they catch us in a lie, that could mean a lot of trouble.”

“You’re right. Let’s not put ourselves to any trouble.”

Dig gives her a look much gentler than she probably deserves. “Felicity.”

She closes her eyes and swallows hard. “I’m sorry. That was mean.”

“I know you’re hurting. And something tells me you haven’t been sleeping well.”

She gives him a rueful smile. “Do I look that bad?”

“Not at all. But I haven’t either.” When he sees her chin trembling, he holds out an arm. “Hey. Come here.”

Dig is good for hugging. Warm and solid and steady. She could spend the rest of the evening being partially crushed by someone who understands, someone who loved him too.

 

 

 

In the heart of a mountain on the other side of the world, Thea stood outside a heavy wooden door, carved deep with symbols she did not recognize.

“You’re ready,” Chase said beside her, and he reached for her hand to give it a reassuring squeeze.

She squeezed back. “Anything I should keep in mind?”

“Show no fear. Speak only when spoken to. And it’s disrespectful to look him in the eyes.”

Thea narrowed her eyes at him. “Excuse me?”

But he was already hauling open the door, and on the other side yawned a room that must once have been a natural cave. Carved figures with odd proportions and too many limbs ringed the walls, frozen in an eternal dance, and at intervals stone soldiers stood at attention in such high relief they were nearly free-standing statues. Torches burned in their steady grip, but their warm light reached only the first dozen feet of rough, untouched stone above them. Beyond was darkness to the vaulted ceiling.

Chase gestured Thea inside, and she took a few hesitant steps. She felt the rush of air as the door closed behind her, and she breathed in the smell of smoke and, beneath it, an odd, metallic dampness.

At the other end of the room, a hooded figure stood draped in thick robes against the mountain chill. Delicate gold embroidery gleamed across the shoulders of his mantle. At his feet, a spring bubbled up from the cave floor, and steam curled around the figure’s feet. Around the edges of the black water spread an iridescent halo of mineral deposits.

“Miss Queen,” said a deep voice that seemed to come from everywhere at once.

Thea only jumped a little tiny bit. She wasn’t used to the acoustics of caves, was all. “Yes. That’s me.”

The figure turned.

Ra’s al Ghul wore a simple belted leather coat beneath his mantle, no more ornate than his Assassins’. He lowered the hood, and beneath it was an unremarkable face of indeterminate heritage, whose main distinguishing features were heavy black brows and eyes so dark they seemed black in the low light.

“They are beautiful, aren’t they?” Even watching his mouth move, his voice seemed to come from the shadows above and behind her.

This time Thea shivered. She would much rather look at the carved figures than meet his eyes, thank you very much. “You mean the walls?”

“They pre-date the League by many centuries,” Ra’s al Ghul said, clasping his arms behind his back and ambling over to the nearest soldier at attention. “They are the work of a great civilization of which nothing remains but their art.” He swept his gaze down the long line of figures. “We do not even know what they called themselves.”

Thea followed his eyes, and then came to an abrupt halt halfway down the wall. Her head tilted slightly sideways. “I guess we know they were open-minded.”

Ra’s regarded the two figures locked in each other’s arms - an implausibly flexible woman and an implausibly strong man, both of them nude - and the other two figures pressed close on either side of them with their hands in interesting places.

He turned back to Thea, and with his hands clasped behind his back, he said, “Why do you believe you are here?”

She chose to focus on a point slightly below the brooch of his mantle. “To learn.”

“Noble,” he said, with such bland inflection that she could not tell if he was mocking her.

“I saw the things that Ch - that An Nayyir could do, when he, um, when he helped me out a little bit in Corto Maltese. He told me this place could teach me that kind of strength.”

“Miss Queen,” Ra’s al Ghul said, pacing a slow arc toward her, “from the day you were born, no one has ever asked you to serve any purpose higher than your own momentary pleasure. In pursuit of it, you gave great trouble to others, stole their belongings, and risked their safety. On the one occasion when you might have paid for this carelessness, your mother and brother stepped in to prevent it.”

“How do you know - ”

“Tell me, have you ever mattered to the world beyond the brief entertainment or adornment you could provide?”

In that moment, trapped under the weight of his black eyes, she could not answer that she had.

His voice softened and darkened, and he inclined his head to her. “Here we are an _ikwaan_. Do you know the word?”

Mutely she shook her head.

“It has been translated as ‘brotherhood.’  It is the source of the strength you seek, and it can be achieved only in common service to a holy purpose. Where there is no tie that binds men, they are not united but merely lined up.”

“What–” She cleared her throat, tried again: “What purpose?”

“A better world.”

She shook her head faintly, and with her eyes still trained on the brooch of his mantle, she said, “I don’t know what that looks like.”

He held out his robed arm, and a single signet ring glittered on his left hand. “Walk with me, child. Let me show you.”

Her hand shook, but she laid it over his.

 

 

 

“Ollie.”

It is a voice he knows. Gentle, familiar.

“Ollie.”

He does not care to wake up. It is soft and comfortable here, and pain is only a distant ache. For too long his dreams have been writhing bodies impaled and split and crushed - grotesque detail, twisted mouths in lurid red. This is his first easy dream in what feels like years. Leave him to it.

“Can you sit up for me?” the voice says.

Without opening his eyes, Oliver says, “No.”

“If you knew what I had right here for you, you’d sit up.”

It is the playful note in the voice that makes him realize: “Sara.”

“There are those eyes open.” She smiles down at him, warm and teasing. In her hand is a steaming mug, and the smell turns his stomach. “Guess what? You lived.”

With consciousness comes pain, drilling deep between his ribs and radiating outward. His head aches. It is possible his hair and fingernails ache as well. “Lucky me.”

“It was touch and go for a while there.” She slides an arm behind his shoulders, and with a strength no one would suspect of her slight frame, she lifts. “It’s good to hear your voice again.”

When she moves him, it feels like things are tearing in his chest. The noise that escapes him is only mildly embarrassing.

She gets a pillow behind him, and then it’s over. “Drink this.”

He takes the mug from her - or tries to. His hands shake, and black dots dance across his vision. Without pity or alarm, she takes the mug back and holds it to his lips.

It tastes like old socks, so it must be good for him. He sips as much as he can, and then she lets him have a break.

“Thea?” he says when he can breathe evenly again.

Sara’s expression turns sober. “Dig and Roy took her home ten days ago.”

Oliver frowns into the mug, the contents of which resemble nothing so much as dishwater. “Ten days?”

“You’ve been a little out of it. Fighting off an infection will do that to you.” She runs her hand down his arm, and she lowers her eyes. “This is the first day you’ve called me the right name. It was kind of a relief.”

“Sorry.”

She smiles softly. “Sometimes you get your blondes mixed up. Could happen to anybody.” Then she raises the mug to his lips, and with some coaxing and a few more breaks, they get the rest of the dishwater into him. Then he is allowed to sink back into the pillows.

He stares at the symbols carved into the stone ceiling, and he swallows hard. “What happens now?”

Sara lays her hands in her lap. “I don’t know.”

 

 

 

“So what, exactly, is the plan?” Dig said, leaning against the med table and bracing his hands on the edge.

“Plan?” Oliver said, shoving his best UnderArmour into a waterproof canvas bag. It was cold in the foothills of the Hindu Kush. “I’m going to go get Thea and bring her back here.”

“Thea isn’t exactly the president of your fan club at the moment,” Felicity pointed out, and then winced at the expression on his face. “I’m just saying, if we need a representative for sanity, you might not be the most persuasive pick.”

“Sara couldn’t talk her out of this?” Roy said, arms crossed protectively in front of him, shifting from foot to foot. “She’s right there, and if anybody knows what a shit deal the League is, it’s her.”

“I don’t have to talk her out of anything,” Oliver growled. “I’ll drag her home kicking and screaming if I have to.”

“See, it’s that kind of thing, right there,” Felicity said, holding up one finger, “that she might find, um, unpersuasive.”

“If she’s reckless and crazy enough to join the League of Assassins, I really don’t give a damn what she finds persuasive.”

“Reckless and crazy,” Dig repeated, almost to himself. “Can’t have that.”

Oliver paused in ransacking his gear to glare at him. “You know who they are and what they do,” he said, low and as serious as they had ever heard him. “And you saw the lengths they’ll go to when members try to defect.”

Dig looked back at him steadily. “We know, man.”

Oliver licked his lips. He had seen the elaborate scar on Sara’s shoulder blade, and he had run his fingers over it in the dark. She never told him where it came from, but he could guess. He did not have to guess how badly a third degree burn of that size and depth must have hurt.

“If they initiate her,” he said, “they’ll brand their mark into her skin, and she will never be free of them.”

“We’re going to help you go get her,” Felicity said softly. “Just let’s think it through.”

Roy got to his feet, shoving his hands in his pockets. “I want to go with you.”

Oliver nodded at the note unfolded on the table, the one Thea left Roy the night Slade’s men overran the city. “I think you’ve done enough.”

Roy squared his shoulders. “I know she kicked me out of her life pretty thoroughly, and I’m–I’m a lot of the reason she left. But if she’s in trouble, I’m coming with you.” He cocked an eyebrow. “Besides, it’s not like she’ll be any happier to see you than me.”

Oliver closed his eyes, because–point. When he opened them again, he was brusque and businesslike. “All right.”

“So, two tickets to–where, exactly?” Felicity said, spinning toward her console.

“Three,” Dig said. “And we’re going to want Mazar-e Sharif International Airport.”

“Now you’re coming too?” Oliver said.

Felicity made a moue. “Boys’ camping trip. I’m starting to feel a little left out.”

“You need me if you want a plausible reason to be in Afghanistan,” Dig said on a shrug. “I’ve got some buddies there working as independent contractors, and I’ve been meaning to offer them a job at Panoptic to help us get off the ground. Two birds, one stone, right?”

Oliver glanced back and forth between all three of them - Dig folding his arms, Roy shifting from foot to foot, and Felicity wringing her fingers in her lap.

He let out a long exhale. “All right. Let’s do this.”

 

 

 

At the end of November, Dig, Felicity, and Thea go to the “artist loft” apartment in the old American Can Company building where Oliver had been sleeping. It feels wrong to say he lived there, because there is hardly any furniture and the whole place looks clean enough to perform surgery on the kitchen counter.

The lease was month to month. As of tomorrow, his belongings go out on the curb.

“When did Ollie turn into a neat freak?” Thea says, looking at the beautifully organized contents of his closet hanging nicely above rows of shoes lined up like soldiers on review. “His room at home was a disaster unless Raisa had just been in there.”

For once Felicity manages to hold her tongue. Laurel has voiced a couple of mild complaints about her houseguest, who is apparently somewhat absent-minded about dishes and laundry. It is probably more tactful not to point out that mess feels different when you know the help will not be cleaning it up for you.

It takes a surprisingly short time to pack up the day to day details of Oliver’s existence, and to put him in boxes destined for a storage unit. There was nothing to bury. This might be as close as they come.

Half an hour in, Felicity finds Thea sitting on the tile floor of the cramped bathroom, a squeeze bottle in her hands with the cap flipped open. She looks angry, which Felicity is quickly coming to recognize as what Thea Queen looks like when she’s in pain.

“Let’s just throw away the soap and whatever else,” Thea says, swiping roughly at her face with the sleeve of her sweater. “It’s not worth packing up, is it?”

Whatever product he used, Oliver has smelled the same for as long as Felicity has known him. She can smell it now, even though the open bottle is several feet away. “Whatever you want to do.”

Thea nods, and she shoves herself to her feet.

For reasons Felicity cannot quite articulate, the closet is the hardest.

“Would it be all right,” she says, smoothing her hands over a blue pullover, “if I, um…”

Thea glances over, tucking her hair behind her ear.

“This one was my favorite,” Felicity confesses.

Thea’s hands lower to the bedspread, and she tips her chin up slightly. “I did sometimes wonder if there was something between you. Was I right?”

Felicity should not have to explain this to Oliver’s family. He should be here, explaining his relationship status for himself, to save her the intense awkwardness. Because Felicity cannot pretend to be his grieving widow. All that was ever between them was a single, interrupted date and a kiss so light she touched her lips afterward to reassure herself it had happened.

Thea smiles thinly. “Secret job, secret identity, secret lair… “ She shrugs. “What’s a secret girlfriend?”

“I wasn’t,” Felicity says quickly. “I wasn’t his girlfriend.”

Thea’s expression softens. “But there was something.”

“I hoped so, yeah.” Felicity’s fingers splay on the downy fabric of the pullover. “I really hoped there would be.”

“I’m really sorry,” Thea whispers.

Felicity looks up, brow furrowed. “You’re - what?”

“It wasn’t supposed to be him,” Thea says, forcing her voice to evenness. “It was supposed to be me.”

Somewhere in all the crying herself to sleep and putting away quiet dreams and taking one breath and then the next and the next - somewhere in there, Felicity felt a few ugly twists of resentment toward someone stupid enough to willingly swear allegiance to the League of Assassins.

“She just had no idea this was a club for killing people?” she told the flip-down mirror in her car, because embarrassing experience has taught her that the confines of a car are the best place to talk to yourself. “It has ‘assassin’ in the name.”

It was not kind, and she is not proud.

But Thea did not put that sword in Oliver’s hand or send him into that arena, and whatever her sins might be, she is paying for them tenfold.

“Believe me when I tell you,” Felicity says firmly, “no, you are not supposed to be dead right now, and, no, that would not have been better.”

They finish folding Oliver’s clothes and sealing them into neatly labeled cardboard boxes, and Dig helps them load everything into the van.

Only the blue pullover remains, hanging on the bedroom doorknob where Thea set it aside. Right before they turn out the lights, she pushes it into Felicity’s hands.

“Thanks for helping.”

“Thanks for letting me.”

They lock up behind them.

 

 

 

Felicity saw the boys off at the airport.

“We’ll call when we touch down in Mazar-e Sharif,” Oliver promised her. Behind him, Roy and Dig climbed the airstairs, one plain duffel and one desert camouflage rucksack over their shoulders.

Oliver popped the collar of his pea coat against the chilly October wind. Felicity stood in his lee, and she wrapped her bare hands in his scarf to warm them. He liked the casualness of it - the way she assumed she had the right.

She smiled up at him. “I’ll keep you updated from here.”

“Keep an eye on Walter. Don’t let him break my company while I’m gone.”

“Walter? Worry about me. I’m going to take the entire contents of Applied Sciences for a joyride.”

He chuckled, and he laid a hand on her shoulder. “When I get back, I’d like to take you out again.”

“You think we’ll manage to finish dinner this time?”

He cupped her cheek in his hand, and he tried on a flirtatious smile he had not worn in some time. “If we’re lucky, we’ll get to dessert.”

She broke into giggles, which was not quite the reaction he was going for. But she looked good, pink-cheeked and laughing with her breath frosting in front of her. Good enough to justify a moment spent looking. Just looking at her.

“Oliver?” she said at last, the laughter fading from her eyes.

“I’m serious,” he said softly. “We’re not done, you and me.”

Her fingers tightened in his scarf. “Of course not.”

Good. As long as she knew. “I’ll see you in a few days.”

She nodded. “See you then.”

But he did not let her go. Not just yet.

Her eyes widened, and he thought maybe her chin tilted up and her mouth rounded for him. Perhaps he was imagining things, but he didn’t think so.

He only touched his lips to hers for a moment. They were both dry and chapped, and her nose was cold brushing his cheek, and it was too quick and too light and too gentle. He wanted his hands in her hair and her body crushed to his and the whole afternoon to do this properly.

It was only a first kiss. There would be time for more later.

One breath, just long enough for her to sigh into him a little bit, and he let her go. She leaned back smiling at him, looking like she might giggle again.

“Oliver!” Roy called from the hatch. “Waiting on you, man.”

Felicity hugged him, quick and hard, and gave him a little shove toward the stairs. “There’s a neck pillow in the left zip pocket of your carry-on. Go, go, go.”

He boarded the plane, and he took a window seat with a view of the hangar.

As the engines revved, Dig tossed a water bottle at his head. “Keep smiling like that, and your face will get stuck.”

“Already making dad jokes,” Oliver said, cracking open the bottle and sliding up the window visor. "That's good. Keep that up.”

Felicity stood with one hand draped over the open door of her car and the other tucked into the pocket of her pretty wool coat. She did not wave, and neither did he.

The plane began to taxi, and he watched her out of sight.


	2. Chapter 2

Oliver, Dig, and Roy trudged up steep, frozen, winding trails to a little village in the foothills of the Hindu Kush, right on the map’s edge of civilization. Somewhere in the mountains beyond lay Nanda Parbat. **  
**

“You wander weeks and never find it,” their interpreter told them with a smile. “Hunger, thirst, a tall drop - you die much before you get close.”

“You know the place?” Oliver said.

“No one knows the place.” The interpreter shrugged. “But when they come, they come from there.”

That evening, Sara came from there, wrapped in fur against the soft snowfall. On a sofa in the little boarding house, snowflakes melted in her hair as she warmed her hands at the fire. “I was away on assignment when Thea came to us,” she said. “She was already training with Nyssa by the time I knew she was here.”

“Can you get me in to talk to her?” Oliver said, at the edge of his beautifully carved chair.

“Ra’s al Ghul respects the Arrow. He’ll give you safe passage.”

“Safe,” Roy muttered, shaking his head and leaning against the mantel.

Sara’s eyes cut over to him. “Nanda Parbat is not what you think. Our word is law, and out here that law is all we have. We take it seriously.”

“If it’s so cozy, why did you call the second you found Thea here?”

“It was different for me,” she said quietly. “They saved my life.”

Dig raised his eyebrows. “Not for free, they didn’t.”

She shook her head. “Nothing is free.” Then she looked Oliver in the face again. “I owed them my life, and now I am what they’ve made me. I have a home here. But Thea doesn’t have to be what I am.”

“Neither do you,” Oliver said quietly.

“I don’t mind what I am,” she said, in apparent sincerity. “I take lives, but I save them too. This place - it’s for people who have lost everything, or who’ve lost themselves. People the darkness has already gotten in deep. We harness it. We turn it to something purposeful.”

“Killing people,” Dig supplied.

“Says the soldier.”

Dig lowered his eyes, allowing the justice of that.

“Thea can be something else,” Sara went on. “I want her to have a chance at it.”

Oliver nodded. “So do I.”

Sara laid her hand over his. “I’ll do what I can to make sure she gets it.”

“Thank you.”

“Ra’s al Ghul gave me leave to bring one of you back to Nanda Parbat with me in the morning,” she said, releasing his hand and looking at Dig and Roy. “But only one of you.”

Dig crossed his arms, and Roy set his jaw. But they nodded.

“We’ll start early,” Oliver said.

She took her pack to a spare room, and after the door closed behind her, Dig shook his head. “Oliver, you don’t know how much she’s bought in, how deep it goes.”

Oliver leaned over to stoke the fire. “I know Sara.”

“You know who Sara used to be.”

He knew her, Oliver was quite certain. If only because he knew himself.

The next day the sun was high overhead, cold and glaring on the slopes of a nameless mountain, when Sara led Oliver into Nanda Parbat. He followed her through winding passages and carved doorframes, past Assassins who covered their faces as he approached, past chilly rooms made livable by fur and tapestry, and up a winding staircase cut into the stone.

“How deep do those caverns go?” he asked as they emerged onto a graceful balcony.

“The excavated, livable ones can house a few hundred people. But the natural ones? We don’t even know.”

“Anyone who wanted to take this stronghold or root you out would have a hell of a time.”

She smiled, and there was something fierce and familiar in it. “That’s the idea.”

He rested gloved hands on the balcony railing, and he looked out over miles of gleaming white mountainside and darkly shadowed ravine - cold and beautiful and merciless. “You said this place turned the darkness to something purposeful.”

“I won’t tell you where or what my last assignment was,” she said, leading him into the warmth of a heavily tapestried chamber. “But I’ll tell you I’m going to sleep better tonight, knowing there’s one less monster in the world.”

She set a pot of tea to steep, steaming and fragrant, and she slipped out of the room and left him waiting on the plush settee.

He was just about to get up and pace when a voice behind him said, “Ollie, what the hell are you doing here?”

Oliver stood, turned, and saw his sister for the first time in months.

Black leathers and a short, severe haircut sharpened the angles of Thea’s face, but it was her posture that had changed most. In place of a gangly teenager stood a young woman, startled and confused and - his eyes raked over the metal gleaming at her belt - heavily armed.

A little lamely, he said, “I came to get you.”

Her eyes narrowed, and there was something different in the way she carried herself when she took a few steps toward him. “How are you here?”

“It’s a long story,” he said, “I just need you to come home.”

“What makes you think I’d go anywhere with you?” she sneered. “Much less back to Starling to pretend we’re a happy little family.”

He held up his hands. “You have every right to be angry, and you can go on hating me as long as you want. Just please come with me now.”

She lifted her chin. “I said give me a good reason.”

“Do you know where you are? Who these people are?”

“I do.”

“And you want to be one of them?”

Out of nowhere came a deep, dark-timbred voice, and every hair on Oliver’s body stood on end when it rolled through the room with just two words: “She is.”

Oliver turned to assess the man of middle age and solid build standing near the heavy doors, which should have squealed or creaked at his entrance but had not. He schooled his face to neutrality and said, “Ra’s al Ghul.”

“Oliver Queen. Spoiled child, tabloid celebrity, castaway.” Ra’s’ smile turned wolfish. “Slayer of Al-Saher.”

Thea looked at Oliver in angry confusion.

“We made common cause not long ago,” Oliver said, and Thea’s eyebrows rose.

Ra’s waved that away. “My daughter’s sentimentality at work again. It proved a valuable training exercise at least.”

Oliver took a deep breath, processing the implication that a full-scale assault on Slade’s small army of roided-out felons was a mere training exercise to these people. “I’m here for my sister.”

“You don’t have one,” Thea snapped.

With his black eyes still fixed on Oliver, Ra’s al Ghul turned his head toward her, just barely. “Peace, Ar-Raqis.”

“Thea,” Oliver said quietly. “Come on. Once we’re out of here, you never have to speak to me again if you don’t want to. But please just get on the plane with me right now.”

No murmur so soft should have echoed and filled the space like the next words out of Ra’s’ mouth: “You ask her to break her oath.”

Oliver raised his chin, as if he could see over Thea’s shoulder and through the layers of leather to where a brand might mark her upper back.

“She has not been initiated,” Ra’s al Ghul said calmly. “Nor has her sword tasted blood in my name.”

Oliver locked eyes with him.

Thea’s lips parted slightly, and she stared at Ra’s’ mantle.

“But she has accepted a place among brethren. She claims my protection, and I her faithful service. Her blood oaths are my oaths, her vengeance is my vengeance, and her debts my debts. In turn, the work of her hands is mine and the blood of my enemies is her tribute to me. This was sworn before witnesses. You ask her to break a sacred trust, Mr. Queen.”

Oliver looked right at Thea when he said, “The blood of your enemies.”

“Her debt is not without limits,” Ra’s al Ghul said in that impossibly resonant murmur. “Forty souls, she owes.”

Thea paled.

Oliver turned to Ra’s, and almost in a whisper he asked, “What is it going to take?”

The dark eyes blinked patiently at him. One heavy eyebrow rose.

“For her to walk out of here, completely free of you.”

Thea bristled. “I told you, I am not going anywhere - “

With a voice like a roll of thunder, Ra’s al Ghul cut her off. “Ar-Raqis!”

She cringed back like a beaten animal, and Oliver resisted the impulse to take a step between them. He cleared his throat and repeated, “What would it take?”

“You are not a prisoner here,” Ra’s told Thea with sudden gentleness. “Should you wish to leave, only provide just compensation and the gate stands open.”

Oliver narrowed his eyes. “Just compensation?”

“Another may serve in your place.” Then, as a ludicrous technicality no sane person would consider, he added, “And of course, if you or your champion were to defeat me in single combat, I could exercise no claim on your loyalty.”

Thea swallowed. “And if I stay, you expect me to kill all those people? All of those…” She squeezed her eyes shut tight for a moment. “Did you say fourteen or forty?”

The quirk of his eyebrow was almost fond. “Two score.”

She rolled her lips together. “That’s forty, right?”

“You fear I will send you after innocents.” He reached for her face, and she stood stock still as he cupped her cheek. “You know our creed, my child. Trust that there is no danger of that.”

Oliver balled his fists at his side. “Let’s go, then. Single combat.”

Thea gaped at him. “Ollie, are you out of your mind?”

“It is Ar-Raqis who must offer such a challenge,” Ra’s al Ghul said, with a ghost of a smile on his face and his hand still resting on her shoulder. “She is not property to be fought over.”

“Then why do you keep a branding iron?”

Thea glanced nervously at Ra’s, who only squeezed her shoulder and politely inclined his head to them both. “You have much to discuss.” He looked Thea in the face, and his great, all-encompassing voice quieted to a murmur. “Ar-Raqis, he must be gone from here by nightfall. Make good use of the time.”

She stared into his black eyes, and she nodded. “I understand.”

His robe whispered on the cold stone, and he was gone. Thea stared at the doorway where he had disappeared, looking a few years younger than usual and far more lost.

Oliver shuffled his feet, waiting.

Finally, she twisted her neck and glared at him. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?”

He just looked back at her sadly, letting the irony of that question sink in slow and heavy.

Her glare slid aside to the floor. “I didn’t know he expected that.” She shook her head. “Forty people, I mean.” Then she tilted her head back on her neck and let out an ironic little laugh. “God, that sounds so stupid, doesn’t it?”

Oliver shook his head, because it was no accident that Ra’s al Ghul preyed on teenagers and made his flamboyant home in ancient caves full of elaborate costumes and rituals and flowery archaic language. “I can see how it might have felt like dress-up or make-believe.”

Thea rolled up her sleeves, and her forearms are black and blue with defensive injuries. “The combat training felt pretty real.”

“The oath you swore–”

“It was in Arabic,” she admitted through gritted teeth. “I repeated it back to Nyssa when she swore me in.”

In deference to the look of self-disgust on her face, Oliver nodded at the floor and let that pass. The Thea who ran Verdant for a year would never have signed a contract in a language she did not understand. If she had not asked questions, it was because she did not want answers.

“But still,” she said, meeting his eyes again. “What the hell are you doing?”

“He offered a way out, and I think we should take it.”

“Okay, that’s very…” It was odd, being on the receiving end of a condescending smile from a ten-years-younger sibling. “Thank you. But you cannot challenge the Demon’s Head to a duel. I mean, it’s a duel. With swords. To the death. Have you ever even touched a real sword? He will cut you into steak tartare.”

It was time. Lies had killed their mother, lies had driven Thea away, and lies had sent her into the arms of these people. It was past time. So Oliver took a deep breath and said, “There are some things about me that you don’t know.”

She tipped her head and gave him a calculating look. “You said that you made common cause with him not long ago. What does that mean?”

“It means I need to tell you a story.” He had not expected his hands to shake. “Kind of a long story.”

“You’ve got ‘til sundown.” She sank down cross-legged, just out of reach of the lapping water. “Hit me.”

He sat down across from her and began.

Half an hour later, she paced the edge of the pool, sweaty and panting, with mussed hair and a few fresh bruises. She had not believed him until he had said, “Come at me,” and he had put her on the floor a few times.

“Oh my God. Half of your bullshit suddenly makes sense,” Thea said, combing her hair back from her face irritably. “Of course. Obviously. You’re the hood guy.”

“The Arrow,” he said quietly.

She turned and pointed a finger at him. “You shot Roy.”

His eyes darted sideways. “Only a little.”

“And he knows who you are, doesn’t he?”

“He’s known since last January.”

She spun on her heel, tangled her fingers in her hair, and made an inchoate noise of frustration. “That _ass_ hole.”

In the asshole’s defense, Oliver offered up: “He came here with me. He’s down in the village with John Diggle.”

Thea ignored that, and much more severely, she said, “You came after Mom.”

“For answers, not to hurt her.” He tugged his collar down and twisted his chin sideways. “She got an excellent shot in. Right here.”

Thea deflated a little bit, leaning back on one foot. “Was that…  the Arrow, was he, um… Is that the reason she’s dead?”

“He isn’t,” Oliver said very quietly, sinking down onto the settee. “I am.”

Thea came to sit next to him, nearly knee to knee. “You mean what happened on the island?”

He looked her in the eyes. “I mean because I didn’t tell either of you the truth about him when it might have made a difference.”

“It was you, though,” she said, narrowing her eyes. “On the rooftop that night. I must have watched that news footage a thousand times. You brought him in.”

He could only nod.

Slowly, Thea said, “How many people has the Hood killed? But you let him live. The man who murdered Mom.”

“Yes, I did.”

Arms crossed, she shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

“I’ll explain as much as I can later, but right now we’ve got more immediate problems.” He stood, grabbed her shoulders, sought her eyes. “Will you come home?”

Her eyes welled up, and she hunched her shoulders. “I need you to go, Ollie.”

“What?”

“Just - back to the village. I’m not doing this with you right now.” She turned her face away, embarrassed to be crying in front of him, as she never used to be. “Please go? I’ll talk to you tomorrow.”

He could not claim to understand, but he had just dropped one hell of a bomb on her. If she needed time, she needed time. “All right. Tomorrow.”

She permitted him to hug her, and then she went to the doorway and leaned her head out.

“Shaula? My brother is ready to leave.”

The Assassin led him back to the gates and wordlessly sent him on his way.

 

 

 

The first time Oliver tries to stand, white stars burst in his vision. He sits right back down again.

The black outline in the doorway does not move, but a voice rumbles through the room. “It will take time for your strength to return to you,”

Oliver braces his hands at his sides and breathes through the adrenaline spike. “And when it does?”

Ra’s al Ghul steps into the light. “You are not a man condemned, Al-Sahim. This is no prison, but a refuge for those whom the world has wronged, and who have found solace in the higher purpose we serve.”

Oliver turns the phrase over in his mind - those whom the world has wronged. Men like Malcolm Merlyn. Impressionable teenagers like Thea. Oliver has seen this dynamic at work before, in the desperate, jostling ranks of the Bratva and among the scarred, maladjusted men who worked for Waller. Ra’s collects the disaffected.

One thing at a time. Oliver reaches for a cotton shirt; he will be cold, but the weight of wool makes it hard to breathe. “Still not clear on what that purpose is, exactly.”

“Aristotle called it _arete_ , excellence in all things. My ancestors sought it under another name, and yours as the heavenly virtues. All of them understood the same underlying truth.”

“Right,” Oliver says, irritable with pain and tugging at his neckline to loosen it. “Like the blind men and the elephant.”

“You know the story,” Ra’s says with evident satisfaction. “Then you know we all of us see through a glass darkly, and the sensual eye is just like the palm of the hand. The palm has not the means of covering the whole of the beast.”

“But you claim to understand the whole of the beast. Enough to take a spear to it, even.”

Ra’s spreads his hands. “The world was made, and like all made things, it exists for a purpose - a great telos beyond the reach of human reason. But, as our forefathers needed only the crudest cosmology to navigate by the stars, so too can we judge the path without knowledge of the destination.”

The last time Oliver heard bullshit of this caliber, he was high on the floor of a freshman dormitory, and his philosophy major roommate was waving a colorful little glass pipe at him and giving him a lecture on Plato, fifty percent of which comprised the words “like” and “you know.”

“We live in an age of decadence, Al-Sahim. Its grotesqueries are everywhere. You know them well, I believe. One stands in the most inhospitable desert of the American West - an entire city of soulless replicas of the great capitals of the world, built to house blinking machines and albino tigers and glittering emptiness, designed to swindle the human brain’s reward circuitry. For this were mighty rivers dammed. For this the sweat of a million brows.”

Oliver bites the inside of his cheek. If he doesn’t, he will crack a smile at the picture of Felicity in his head, scrunching up her nose and demanding to know where Ra’s al Ghul got his intel on the mighty rivers of Las Vegas.

“Men were not meant to live this way,” Ra’s continues. “The marvels of our ingenuity and the fruits of our labors must serve higher ends. You know this.”

Silently, Oliver looks him in the eyes.

“You have been doing the Creator’s work all along.”

“I wouldn’t say that,” Oliver says quietly.

“Your city,” Ra’s says, clasping his hands behind his back and taking a few steps closer. “I have seen it. Like all cities, it is beautiful, and as in all cities, the beauty is grim.”

Through clenched teeth, Oliver says, “What do you intend for Starling?”

Suddenly businesslike, Ra’s says, “At the moment, nothing. The centers of power lie elsewhere, and the League has no reason to concern itself with a mid-size port city. In London and Gotham and Singapore, the work of the world must be done.”

“Killing those who would lead us down the wrong path?”

“You have done it before, Al-Sahim.”

Oliver lowers his eyes.

“There is honor in this,” Ra’s reassures him. “And there is brotherhood to be shared, when you have come to understand.” With fatherly gentleness, he presses a tumbler carved from horn into Oliver’s hand. It smells of honey and cinnamon. “Rest now. We will talk again soon.”

He is nearly at the door when Oliver says, “What does it mean?”

The shape in the doorway goes still.

“Al-Sahim,” Oliver repeats. “What does it mean?”

Without turning around, Ra’s al Ghul says, “It means ‘arrow.’”

 

 

 

In the little boarding house down in the village, Thea stood with her chin held up stubbornly and her arms wrapped tightly around her.

On rickety chairs near the fire, Oliver, Dig, and Roy sat gaping at her.

It was Roy who first dredged up words: “Why would you - what were you even - _what_?”

It was not the most impressive English sentence ever strung together, but it was miles ahead of Oliver and Dig’s mute horror.

“It’ll be better this way,” Thea said defiantly. Had her voice not shaken, she might even have achieved chilly finality.

Roy’s fists clenched at his sides. “If you think we’re going to stand by and let you do that–”

“I’ve already done it.” She seemed a little dazed by the idea herself. “We duel in two days.”

“No. This is insane.” He rose from his chair, and his voice rose with him. “This is suicide.”

“I want it over with,” she said, matching him decibel for decibel as he stepped up, right in her face. “These were my choices, and this is my fight. I got myself into this, and nobody else is going to get me out of it.”

Dig shook his head hard. “Thea, we’ll find another way.”

“There isn’t one,” she snapped. “And besides, this way nobody else gets hurt.”

It was the quietness of Oliver’s voice that focused the whole room inexorably on his next words: “You think this way isn’t going to hurt?”

Thea looked him right in the face, and she could only bear his expression for the space of a breath.

She shrank toward the door. “I have to be back before sunset.”

Dig got to his feet. “You mean we have a three hour head start before they come looking.” He caught Oliver’s gaze and said, “We packed light, and we’ve got a plane on standby. I say we leave right now.”

Oliver looked back at him steadily, and then at Roy standing ready and willing beside him. Gratitude welled up inside him. Pride and gratitude and a treacherous flicker of hope.

But there was one more voice he wanted to hear, one more face he wanted to see. Even if she had no brilliant ideas - and she would, he knew she would - Felicity would at least stumble into saying the one thing that would somehow be exactly right. Oliver wanted a satellite phone as badly as he had ever wanted one on the island.

“I won’t go with you,” Thea murmured. “It would be a death sentence for all four of us.”

It occurred to Oliver, just briefly, that she was one slender teenage girl with less than half a year of combat training, and they were three solidly built men, each with a body count to his name. He had promised to drag her home kicking and screaming if necessary.

But, if he had a satphone, he knew what the voice on the other end would say about that.

His voice shook, and his tense shoulders shook, and his curled fists. “I can’t believe you would do something so stupid.”

She lifted her chin. “I don’t expect you to understand.”

And she slipped out into the bright white afternoon.

 

 

 

“I can’t get close to the League itself,” Felicity says, adjusting the settings on John and Lyla’s coffee maker. “I mean, I’d have a hard time scraping together documentation that it even exists. But I think I might be tiptoeing around the edges of it.”

John spares her a worried glance, but only a glance. Then he rearranges Elaine on his lap and tries another angle to convince her to take the bottle. “What kind of tiptoeing have you been doing?”

“Just research.” A long pour of water sloshes into the coffee maker. “No harm ever came from a little research.”

“Don’t make a whole pot on my account.” John raises an eyebrow at her generous pour. Much as he loves Felicity, the thick caffeine soup she calls coffee is not fit for human consumption.

“Oh, this is for me,” she says absently, and sets the machine to preheat.

“Research?” John prompts, and Elaine makes an unhappy noise in his arms.

“I tried to find the money,” she says on a sigh, flopping down into a chair. “An operation that big, flying people around the world, maintaining safe houses, operating solely by cash in multiple currencies - how do you finance all that under the table?”

John sets the bottle on the table in frustration, and he looks Felicity in the eyes. “I’m guessing you start by making sure no one asks too many questions.”

Felicity gives him a wan smile, and she holds out her arms for fussy, grumbly Elaine.

He shrugs and hands her over. “If you think you’ll have better luck.”

“I don’t know about that,” Felicity says, in the slight singsong she uses just for Lainie. She holds the baby up face to face with her. “I just wanted to hold you, sweet girl. You don’t even have to eat if you’re too grumpy. Just come sit by me, ok?”

John watches her settle Elaine comfortably against her chest, and he points the bottle at both of them. “You do too have to eat, kid.”

“Dad’s so bossy,” Felicity stage-whispers, cheek pressed to Elaine’s dark curls.

John deliberately lets the tension melt out of his shoulders, and he rests his elbows on the table. “Felicity, what did you find?”

“I started with the plane ticket that Nyssa bought. Traced the account, traced that to another account, to another, to a dummy eco nonprofit, to a Swiss bank.”

“So nothing.”

“Nothing. But there are plenty of somethings around the nothing, and if I can piece them all together then I can kind of see the shape of the nothing, you know?” Contemplatively, she gives Elaine a few gentle bounces. “Since the sixties, they’ve set up environmentalist front groups and collected donations, but that wouldn’t be nearly enough. I think they’re living on rents and interest from investments, and have been since at least the late nineteenth century. Some of the accounts have histories that far back.”

“They claim to date back centuries.”

Felicity kisses Elaine’s hair. “I kind of doubt it.”

John nods, because he knows enough of extremism to recognize the pattern when he sees it. “They’re too reactionary to be ancient.”

In Felicity’s arms, Elaine refuses the bottle again and blows a couple of grumpy bubbles.

As gently as he can, John says, “Even if you had the League all figured out, what would you do about it?”

Felicity keeps her eyes on Elaine, even as they well up. She does not answer.

“You want to take them on?”

“That would be stupid, and I would die,” she whispers.

He gestures to the piles of manila folders slouched on the coffee table. “If it’s busywork you want, we’ve got enough on our plates looking into Brickwell.” God knows that, shorthanded and suddenly leaderless, they have been struggling to fill the Arrow’s boots. Struggling to decide whether they should even try.

“I know,” Felicity says, and sniffles. “And don’t go thinking I’ve lost focus on that.” She takes a deep breath, and the bottle she propped up against her front shifts slightly. “We’re going to do the job, because it needs doing.”

In his honor, they said. The first mission they ran without him, they agreed on that much.

“But I kind of just want to–” sniffle, “–to understand, you know?”

John lays his hand on her arm, and she finally looks him in the face.

“Is that so weird?”

“Nah. Not weird at all.”

She musters up a smile, and he smiles back.

Then–

“Oh, crap,” she hisses, because the bottle has leaked all over her shirt.

John gets to his feet. “I’ll get you a towel.”

 

 

In the doorway of the boarding house, Oliver shook the snow from his coat, and he said, “I have a plan.”

“Excellent,” Roy said over by the fire, tossing his cards face down on the table. He shoved his chair backwards and got to his feet. “We’re all ears.”

Oliver shook his head, eyes everywhere but their faces. “I need you to just… trust me. Can you do that?”

Roy narrowed his eyes, and he cast a glance at Dig. Cards still fanned out in his hand, Dig stared Oliver down until he forced eye contact.

The second their eyes met, recognition sparked between them. Dig took a deep breath through his nose, laid his four of a kind face up on the table, and he leaned back in his chair. His sharp focus softened, and his gaze turned inward. He bent his head.

It was simple. He knew what he himself would do if Elaine were in trouble this deep.

“Dig?” Oliver said uncertainly.

“We trust you,” Dig said quietly.

Roy shifted uncomfortably over his feet. “What are you–?”

“We trust you,” Dig repeated.

Oliver looked at the floor again.

They asked no more questions.

The night before the duel, Thea was permitted to stay down in the village. Bedded down in the snow, two faceless Assassins kept watch on the exits all night.

Oliver, Dig, Roy, and Thea sat up by the fireplace after dark in the little common room, playing Nertz with Dig’s well-loved decks of cards. Incense crackled into ash on the fire, Thea accused Roy of cheating, the flames burned down to embers, and Roy convinced them of his innocence. Dig won two rounds in a row, and they laid the cards aside. Oliver went to bed first, and Dig called it a night shortly after. Finally Thea banked the fire and led Roy to his bedroom.

Afterwards, tangled skin on skin beneath the rough quilt, he wrapped himself around her and said, “Don’t do this.”

She pulled away, and her eyes were very big and overbright in the darkness. “Please don’t try to change my mind.”

“Thea–”

“Could you just - not?” She pressed her forehead to his collarbone again. “Could you please just be here?”

He wrapped her up again, kissed her part. “Yeah, I’m here.”

She fell hard and fast into sleep, and he lay awake holding her for a long time.

It would be all right. Oliver had a plan.

Early the next morning, the Queens bundled up warm against the light snowfall, and they made the long trek to Nanda Parbat.

In the chamber provided for Thea to make ready, the black leather of her League garb waited for her. So did a well-stocked bar, at which Oliver poured them both generous glasses of wine. She sipped distractedly in between buckles and straps.

When she was dressed, Oliver hugged her tight and tucked her head under his chin. “I love you very much. You know that, don’t you?”

“Yeah,” she muttered, frowning in confusion at a sudden rush of dizziness. “Course. Love you too.”

“Everything’s going to be all right. I promise.”

She slumped against him, and he swung her up into his arms. Kissed her forehead one last time, laid her down on the sofa, and went to face the Demon’s Head.

 

 

 

“Most of the work is done, as far as tearing down the legal framework for Rochev’s takeover,” Laurel says, sliding a cup of chamomile tea across her little dining room table to Thea. “I’ve been working with forensic accountants to determine the exact level of malfeasance in the last few weeks before Rochev’s death.”

Thea leans her elbows on the table and smoothes her hair back from her face. “What does all this mean?”

Laurel sits down across from her and wraps her hands around her own mug. “Ollie got your shares back. I think you can get the house too.”

Thea tips her head back on her neck wearily. “There is literally nothing I care about in that house.”

“Do you care about three and a half million in property going to Rochev’s estate if you don’t fight this?”

Thea sits up straight and looks Laurel in the eyes. Her jaw clenches.

Laurel smiles grimly. “Thought so.” She reaches for her laptop in its leather case, and she unfolds it on the table. “All right. Here’s how we’re going to rip their lungs out.”

They spend the rest of the evening deep in legalese, and by eleven o’clock Thea has a pounding headache.

“We wouldn’t have to do any of this if Ollie had half a brain,” she says on a groan, pacing in front of the coffee table. “‘Let’s just sign the company over to my leggy new rival. That’s a great idea!’”

Laurel just looks at her, and she loudly refrains from mentioning who refused to sign the paperwork that would have mitigated the damage.

Thea slumps on the sofa. “I know I’m being a bitch.”

“You’re angry with him.” Wryly, Laurel adds, “Believe me, I get it.”

“After what he did for me…” Thea swallows hard and shakes her head. A little choked, she confesses: “But I’m still so pissed at him, I could kill him myself.”

“He stole a choice out from under you. And now he’s not here to yell at, which only makes you angrier, and it’s all just a vicious cycle that is going to eat you up unless you find a way to break it.” Laurel swirls the dregs in her teacup. “Do you know of anything that helps?”

Thea thinks of Sara and Nyssa, grinning fiercely at her and saying, “I know you can hit me harder than that.” She thinks of Roy, showing up to Verdant with strike mitts and holding her while she cried.

“Yeah, I do, actually.”

Felicity, Dig, and Roy all look up in surprise when she comes down the stairs of Arrow HQ the next night, dressed far more plainly than usual.

“Is everything all right?” Dig says, setting aside the brush and solvent laid out neatly next to his disassembled Glock 17.

“It’s fine,” Thea says, and takes a deep breath. “I was hoping to borrow Roy.”

Roy sets aside the fletching jig in his hands. “Sure, what for?”

Without looking at him, she strips off her windbreaker and lays it over a chair. Toes off her sneakers one by one. Stands in yoga pants and a tank top, and gestures to the mats. “Come on, let’s go a few rounds. You and me.”

For a long few seconds, he just looks her over.

Dig and Felicity exchange glances.

Thea raises her eyebrows expectantly.

“All right,” Roy says, and gets to his feet. “Let’s go.”

For the first time in weeks, she gives him a real smile.

 

 

 

Oliver knelt in a slush of mud and blood and snow, struggling for air and spitting up red. In the soft blue twilight, snowflakes whispered down and melted on his bare shoulders. The ravine waited below, black and empty and soundless.

Ra’s al Ghul stood over him, sword in hand, and in a gentle voice, he blessed his passing.

In the few moments left to him, Oliver thought of Thea. Thea whom he had failed, who was still bound to serve the man whose sword hung dripping at his side. He imagined his mother, opening her arms to him, and his father smiling with pride. They had been waiting for him. It might not be so bad to rest.

He felt a kiss brush his lips, feather-light but enough to anchor him to the world.

“We’re not done yet,” he had promised her. She was waiting for him too.

He tried to straighten his back. Couldn’t.

Then a voice said, “Spare him.”

The gathered onlookers murmured and whispered in shock as Sara approached - carefully, hesitantly, well out of range of the sword, but walking toward the Demon’s Head. “Spare his life. Offer him his sister’s debt.”

Coolly, Ra’s al Ghul turned his gaze on her. “And if he dies of his wounds?”

“For the man who killed Al Saher? It seems worth the gamble.”

His eyes narrowed thoughtfully. “You care for him.”

“I do. Doesn’t make me wrong.”

He turned back to Oliver, who crumpled forward into the snow. “Mr. Queen, do you accept your sister’s debt of service to me?”

Sara turned to him as well, and her eyes burned intently. Do it. Say yes.

Oliver tried to speak. Blood bubbled from his mouth. After glancing at Ra’s for permission, Sara hurried over to kneel next to him.

“There can be no change of heart,” Ra’s warned him.

“Can’t,” Oliver choked out to Sara.

“Then Thea will,” she said quietly, tearing her black robes for a makeshift bandage. “Besides, you might still die and be off the hook.”

He reached for her shoulder, and she steadied him.

Almost gently, Ra’s said, “Your answer, Mr. Queen.”

Struggling for air, with a whistling noise on every breath, Oliver looked at Ra’s and said, “I accept.”

Ra’s nodded. “Naja. An-Nayyir. Help him.”

Oliver knew no more.


	3. Rough draft of the remainder

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> After months of wrestling with the damn thing, I’ve realized I simply do not have it in me to finish this story. Not properly, not the way I imagined it two autumns ago.
> 
> I’m officially discontinuing the story, and below I’m posting the entire contents of the rough draft, for anyone who is still curious. Warts and all.
> 
> I’m sorry for any disappointment, and I hope I can get back to telling y’all some actual, complete, and coherent stories without this one weighing on me.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It feels terribly sloppy to post a rough draft like this, but I wanted to give y'all what I could. I hope you find something to enjoy in where it might have gone.

“Oliver Queen is dead,” An Nayyir tells Dig and Roy when he and Sara bring a limp, drugged Thea to their hotel in Mazar-i-Sharif.  “It was an honorable end. The girl is free to go.” **  
**

Roy and Dig are both shellshocked, suspicious, and pissed off.

“That makes no sense.”

“If he lost the duel, why are you letting her go?”

“A life for a life,” Sara says. Oliver’s blood is still under her fingernails when she presses [something Felicity gave Oliver, in which Sara has hidden a message] into Dig’s hands. “See that gets home where it belongs, please.”

If she is here, giving them Oliver’s effects, it must be true.

Roy stands frozen, staring at Sara with his mouth slightly open. It is Dig who moves first, holding out his arms for Thea. An Nayyir hands her over, and he tucks the blanket tighter around her before he turns his back.

The Assassins are nearly at the door when Dig says, “We want his body.”

Everyone - including Roy - turns to look at him in surprise.

“Let us take him home. He came here for family, he followed your damn laws, he died with whatever you call honor. He deserves that much.”

Sara’s dignified mask slips, and underneath she looks absolutely destroyed.

It is An Nayyir who answers. “Sorry, but we couldn’t recover it. And, all due respect, Mr. Diggle, but how were you going to transport a corpse across international borders?”

Dig blinks hard and looks down at Thea in his arms. Shifts her more comfortably onto his shoulder.

Sara shifts her weight onto her forward foot, then she checks herself. It’s not her place.

She watches them leave.

 

 

While Oliver is gone, Team Arrow has to function in the field without him. The first time Roy comes home badly injured, Thea says, “You need backup. This is not negotiable.”

“Oliver will kill me if I let you do that.”

“Worry about what I’ll do to you if you don’t.”

And thus does the Canary-in-training put on the wig for the first time. “I always thought I’d make a hot blonde.” It is temporary - Thea does not have the sense of obligation to Starling that Roy or Oliver have. She is in it to back Roy up.

 

 

Meanwhile at Nanda Parbat, Oliver is learning just how twisty the internal politics of the League are, learning their laws and customs, and coming to understand their cult’s frankly embarrassing freshman year philosophy bullshit.

He meets Talia al Ghul, heir apparent and true believer in her father’s weird, grandiose theology. This woman makes Nyssa look like a gentle, merciful sweetheart. Her kills feature a level of poetic sadism that put the lie to her father’s solemn lectures on honorable death.

Even worse, she has her eye on Starling. Her father’s pet obsessions are London and Gotham, the financial capitals of the world. Talia believes that the true threat lies in the birthplace of Kord Industries and its unnatural “biotech revolution.”

Looking around at all this crazy, Oliver is more and more certain he needs a way out. Fast.

Sara’s only suggestion is, “Sleeping with the crazed cult leader’s daughter and then dramatically poisoning yourself seems to work.”

“That sounds like Plan Z. Let’s come up with A through Y first.”

 

 

Then comes the day when Ra’s al Ghul says, “Go to Starling.”

“You’re sending me home?”

“Complete your recovery, and say your goodbyes. I will call when I have need of you.”

 

 

After twenty-three straight hours spent traveling, Oliver is one giant ache. His wound throbs, and so do all the infrequently-used muscles he’s relying on to help him favor it.

He didn’t quite think through where he would be staying tonight. It’s been six weeks; the month-to-month lease on his apartment has probably not been renewed. So he goes where he always goes when he’s on autopilot.

The steel door of the lair swishes open, and the familiar smell of dust-and-WD-40 washes over him. He is surprised to find the lights already on, but he hears nothing downstairs. Perhaps Roy forgot to shut everything down again.

Oliver descends the stairs slowly, going easy on his achy everything. Halfway down, he hears the very distinct sound of a round chambered into a weapon, and immediately adrenaline floods his system.

“Who’s there?” Dig’s voice sounds extra impressive reverberating off the concrete walls.

Oliver sighs and relaxes. “It’s me. I should have called.”

He didn’t only because he didn’t know what to say to them. He’d hoped to put off the inevitable sitrep and hopeless strategy session for a few more hours, but now here they are. He still doesn’t have the words.

But the dead silence downstairs feels wrong. Curious, he goes down to meet them.

Four people stare at him, completely motionless. Felicity stands in front of her rolling chair at the console. Roy kneels over Thea on the mats, his hand splayed over her shoulder. And a few paces in front of Felicity, Dig holds a Weaver stance with that loaded weapon.

All four of them look like they don’t know whether to scream or cry.

“Oliver?” Felicity whispers.

Dig moves first. He lowers the gun. Then Thea scrambles to her feet, and Roy clumsily follows.

They keep staring at Oliver, as though he has just torn a jagged hole in the fabric of reality and stepped through it into the room.

He lingers on the bottom step, feeling more than a little awkward.

Thea sucks in a little gasp of a breath. “You’re alive.”

“What?” He reaches for the railing, because the adrenaline crash is making him shaky now. “Of course I’m alive.”

“But Sara told us–” Felicity says. “She said you were–”

“You died on that mountain,” Dig says.

He looks from Thea’s chalk white face to Felicity’s brimming eyes, and his blood turns to icewater. “She told you that?”

“You’ve been dead for six weeks,” Roy says.

Oliver sits down on the bottom step. Or, rather, his legs mutiny and gravity sits him down.

He’s pretty sure he will never forget the way Thea sounds when she chokes out, “Ollie,” and comes running.

“Easy, easy, easy,” he keeps whispering, which slows her down some. She doesn’t collide with him full tilt, but instead crumples next to him on the step and gets her arms around his neck. “Thea, it’s okay.”

It is very clearly not okay, and she is trying to explain exactly how not okay it is, but she’s crying too hard for him to understand a word of it. It hurts to move, much less to move her, but somehow he gets an arm around her and says, “Shh, it’s all right. Try not to jostle me, please. I’m here, it’s all right.”

It doesn’t feel real - his sister sobbing into his collar as she hasn’t since she was tiny. Dig staring at him wide-eyed. Roy swiping at his nose. None of it is real until he locks eyes with Felicity.

Her eyes are brimming, but her cheeks are dry. She stands hugging herself near the corner of her desk, and when he meets her eyes she gives him a smile that looks downright painful.

“I’m so sorry,” he says hoarsely. “I had no idea.” He has died before, and he has seen the collateral damage. If he had known, he would have found a satellite phone or stolen someone’s cell or sent a damned carrier pigeon. Anything.

Dig seems to snap back to himself first. “You’re hurt,” he says, with a much more familiar expression on his face. “What happened?”

“I dueled the Demon’s Head,” Oliver says. “I lost.”

Felicity looks away.

“Sword to the chest collapsed the lung,” he amends, with as much distance from the event as possible. “The snow actually slowed the blood loss, and after that, the infection was more dangerous than the wound itself. Two days ago, I finally got the go-ahead to travel.”

Thea still cannot stop crying, but she disentangles herself and sits up.

 

 

Oliver is back, which means a collective “What now?”

“We should probably report you un-missing to the authorities,” Felicity says.

“You missed court dates and meetings with lawyers and a whole bunch of other things,” Thea says. “How do we explain this?”

“Hiking accident,” Felicity says, off the top of her head. “You fell on a sharp branch.”

(eyebrows)

“Really, really sharp?”

“I can hide the injuries.” Probably. “It’s the time I’m worried about.”

“Rehab,” Thea suggests.

“Not an option. I still want a place on QC’s board.”

“About that,” Thea says on a sigh. “We didn’t get the house.”

“Why not?”

“It’s not a final no,” Felicity jumps in to explain. “It just wasn’t an immediate yes. We’re going to keep working on it.”

Oliver inclines his head, takes a deep breath. When he lifts it again, he says firmly, “I was on Lian Yu. I went back there to clear my head, after what happened in the spring.”

“That’s the best you can come up with?” Roy says.

“Generally, when I bring up the island or my mother’s murder, it makes people uncomfortable enough that they stop asking questions.”

“But you went on sabbatical and didn’t tell anyone? That makes you look like kind of a dick.”

“So I’ll look like kind of a dick.”

“Why are you here, Oliver?” Felicity finally asks the obvious question. “He didn’t just… let you go.”

“I don’t know yet. But I didn’t believe Ra’s for a second when he told me it was to heal up and say my goodbyes. He has some other purpose for me here.”

“Take him at his word about the healing up, at least,” she advises. “Do you know where you’ll be staying?”

Oliver opens his mouth. Shuts it.

“We have an extra bedroom,” Dig says.

“I won’t ask you to–”

“You didn’t.”

[meaningful friendship stare]

“Thank you,” Oliver says very quietly.

Dig waves him off. “I figure it’s more efficient, keeping both the kids who need nursemaids in one place.”

The corner of Oliver’s mouth quirks up. “Not funny.”

 

 

When the team finds out that Oliver is alive, and Sara elected not to tell them for nearly two months -

“What the hell is wrong with you?” Dig demands.

“There was no safe way to get word to you,” she says, with a stubborn set to her chin. “And besides, if he’d died of that infection, you’d have lost him twice. I didn’t want to put you through that.”

There is just about nothing that infuriates Felicity more than people withholding information she believes she has a right to, and she doesn’t speak to Sara more than she absolutely has to for a couple of days. But eventually she relents, and she brings a chocolate croissant to the lair as a peace offering.

“I understand why you did it. I still don’t like it, but I understand.”

Sara accepts the pastry bag with a very serious expression. “I understand why you were angry.”

“Thank you.”

Sara peeks in the bag, takes a deep whiff. “Is there chocolate baked in?”

Nod.

Sara gives her that smile - the one that makes her eyes sparkle and deepens the dimple in her chin - and they’re good.

 

 

“Sooner or later, he’ll give me an order,” Oliver says quietly.

“Right, but that means we might have months to figure out how to get you out of this bargain.”

“It’s Ra’s al Ghul, Felicity. You don’t weasel out of a contract with the leader of a cult of assassins.”

“So when he calls you up, we run for it.”

He looks up sharply.

“I could keep us under the radar, buy us time to figure out something else. He’s not invincible, Oliver. He’s just another psycho on a power trip, and we’ve handled that before. Seriously, this one doesn’t even have super strength.”

He gives her a sad half-smile, and his voice breaks on her name.

She talks faster, as if that can banish whatever horrible martyred thing he’s about to say next. “Sara could help. She knows more than we do about all their weird culty stuff.  If he’s so hung up on his laws, then we lawyer up, right?”

Oliver lays his hand over hers. “If we ran, we would spend a few weeks - months, if we were lucky - looking over our shoulders and sleeping with one eye open. Then they’d find us.”

She chokes up, because she hears the finality in his voice. “Maybe we win.”

“They’d take me to Nanda Parbat – “

“If they could get their hands on you,” she says stubbornly.

“ – and they would make me cooperate.”

She slides her hand out from under his.

“I’m not invincible either,” he says softly. “With the right leverage… they could make me do what they wanted. I know they could.”

She sits up straighter in her chair, hands in her lap. “I guess they already have.”

He takes it like a gut punch.

“So what is your plan, then?” she says, almost cold, because God damn him, he won’t even try.

“When he gives me the order, I’ll challenge him again. If I kill him, I walk free.”

Actually getting pissed off now: “Which part of the whole ‘stabbed in the lung’ experience makes that seem like a good plan to you?”

“This way, there’s no collateral damage if I lose.”

She gets to her feet. Can’t even look at him right now. “Great. Perfect. Tidy, even.”

Now he’s starting to get angry right back. “What do you want me to do, Felicity?”

“I want you to stop jumping on every grenade that gets hurled at us!”

[he rants about how every other option ends with a big pile of corpses and Ra’s getting exactly what he wants in the end anyway, and Oliver chose this knowing he wouldn’t walk away in one piece. He desperately needs her to understand why he’s doing this - to understand him - because the core of it is that he isn’t willing to risk other people in a vain attempt to save himself. And he doesn’t see why that makes him the asshole here.]

Now the anger bleeds out of her, and there’s just this weary sadness, and her eyes well up. It feels too selfish to tell him that she feels like he chose this over her. Threw away her happy ending too, when he made this choice.

Oliver: “I have let Thea down so many times, in so many ways…” He shakes his head. “Not this time.”

Felicity: “I don’t think selling your soul for her is anywhere in the big brother contract.”

“So I should have left her there to die, or to be his pawn?”

“You didn’t have to challenge a guy who goes by ‘the demon’s head’ to a duel on the spot. We could have regrouped, come up with a plan. We could have figured it out.”

“Much as I appreciate the Monday morning quarterbacking, I made the call. This is where we are now.”

Frustrated, starting to cry: “You died. Do you not get that?”

He softens.

“I know you weren’t on vacation in the Magic Kingdom, but it wasn’t great here either. You were dead for six weeks. Thea thought she had no more family left, and it was all her fault. Dig thought he never should have let you go up that mountain alone. And I thought… there were things I should have told you before you left. I thought I’d missed my chance.” With uncharacteristic bitterness: “Which, I guess I did.”

“I didn’t know the League had told you that.”

“And you had no way to contact us even if you did. I’m not saying it’s your fault. I’m saying it wasn’t just yourself you traded away.”

“None of this is what I wanted or intended.”

Sniffling, getting a hold of herself: “I know. But it’s where we are.”

“What you wanted to tell me…” Oliver says carefully. “I’m right here.”

“Well, that’s the thing, isn’t it?” she says wearily. “You’re kind of not.”

 

Thea is pissed at him too.

Yes, Oliver was a sneaky paternalistic bastard. His attitude is, “You’re free of the League, and I won’t apologize for that. Besides, it was my fault you fell in with them to begin with, so this was my mess to clean up. I don’t care if you hate me, so long as you’re ok.”

The others are not terribly impressed by his logic, even if they understand why he did it. Looking at baby Elaine, Dig admits that if she were to get into life-threatening trouble one day, he can imagine himself disrespecting her agency pretty hard to get her out of it.

 

 

Oliver steps on a scale not long after he arrives home, and the spiky digital numbers say he is twenty-eight pounds lighter than when he left. His clothes hang loose, and the bony torso in the mirror looks like a stranger’s. A single flight of stairs leaves him panting, and stretching too far in any direction feels like getting stabbed all over again.

It will take months for him to get back to his previous condition, and at the moment he is certainly no use for fieldwork.

“Rest,” the others tell him. “Heal. We’ve got it covered for a while.”

With an uncomfortable mix of pride and resentment, he comes to find that this is true. His team has learned to function without him - much more cautiously, short-handed as they are, but very effectively.

Dig leads the team in a set of gray leathers designed by STAR Labs, and after a few weeks, he becomes a recognizable figure to law enforcement. With all the creativity Oliver has come to expect from the department that spent six months referring to him as “The Hood Guy,” SCPD starts calling Dig the Gray Hood on their radio chatter. Not long after, the press discovers his existence, and some fanciful journalist christens him Watchman.

“Watchman and Watchtower,” Felicity says at the Diggles’ dinner table, smacking him in the chest with a newspaper containing his very first headline. “It’s amazing how watchful we are.”

Lyla leans back in her chair, and her smile might be a little smug. “You know what Panoptic means, don’t you?”

“All-seeing,” Dig says, to Roy’s blank expression. “Like Argus Panoptes and his hundred eyes.”

Roy’s nose scrunches up, and he rearranges Elaine in his lap. “We’re named after ARGUS?”

Lyla prods a takeout carton toward him with her chopstick. “Be careful, or I’ll take that personally.”

Oliver’s least favorite aspect of the new lineup is that it includes Thea.

“They need backup, Ollie,” she tells him the first night she tries on Sara’s old gear, which is very nearly the right size for her. “You know they could use the help.”

After weeks of watching her and Roy practice ground fighting on the mats, happy as tussling puppies, Oliver is fairly certain whose back she is most interested in watching. But Thea has made it clear that speculation on the subject is unwelcome, so Oliver only sighs and says, “For how long?”

She bends over to lace up one of the boots. “Until they don’t anymore.”

He closes his eyes and rubs his temples. “Can’t you zip the jacket up any higher?”

“Nope.” She straightens with a dramatic flip of the blonde wig, and she grins at her reflection in a nearby glass case. “This way, none of the bad guys will be looking at my face.”

He rubs the heels of his hands over his eyes.

But, in the end, he has to admit that Arsenal and the new Canary work together as smoothly and seamlessly as if they had been trained as a two-man team. Watching them from mission control on whatever security feed Felicity has managed to hijack, he feels something warm suffuse his chest. He is pretty sure it is pride.

At the moment all Oliver is good for is watching, and occasionally offering an opinion. He brings a tactical awareness to Watchtower that Felicity has been slowly acquiring by exposure, but which she has not yet internalized.

“They’re going to want eyes here and here,” he says, tapping a set of building blueprints.

Felicity frowns at the second passageway he indicated. “But that’s nowhere near the–” Her eyes widen. “Ohhh. If there’s trouble, that’s where it’s going to come from.”

He hardly ever has to explain; she picks it up fast. “More than likely.”

Aside from that, he spends a lot of time sitting within easy rolling distance of her desk chair, listening to the comm chatter and busying his hands.

He sharpens knives and customizes arrows, as he always has. He designs and tests new grappling hooks and concealable weapons. But while his team gathers intel on Werner Zytle, an arrowhead pendant takes shape on the softly whirring grindstone. With an increasingly elaborate variety of pliers, Oliver moves on to necklaces and bracelets and maddeningly delicate earrings. Half of them break in the making, and once he sends tiny seed pearls skittering all over the floor. By the last night of January, when the team brings in Vertigo, Oliver has made three pieces of jewelry that would not look out of place nestled in a velvet box.

Slowly, his strength returns to him. After hundreds of breathing exercises and briefly-held yoga poses and gentle stretches, he is still useless as a vigilante but perfectly serviceable as a babysitter. Elaine isn’t even crawling yet, so she can’t outrun Oliver no matter how easily winded he is these days.

He tends to nap when she does, and he lets her sleep curled up on his stomach the whole time. It is easier than putting her down, even moreso once she gets used to the arrangement and starts fussing as soon as he brings her anywhere near her crib.

“He’s spoiling you rotten, isn’t he?” Roy says, taking her tiny hands and bouncing them up and down. Before Oliver, he was her most frequent babysitter, for which Lyla paid him rather more than the going rate. “But I’m still your favorite, right?”

Oliver suppresses an eyeroll and a smart remark, because he is absolutely not going to turn into a competitive asshole over which of them a four-month-old likes better. He knows how easily you can buy her affection with silly faces.

Nevertheless, something about a tiny person with huge brown eyes willingly snuggling up to him is the ultimate vote of confidence.

As he recovers, he starts to push himself physically - just to the point of discomfort, not pain. For a few weeks, much of the way he keeps Elaine entertained is by using her as a free weight. “You like to fly, don’t you, Lainie?”

She is mildly amused by flying, yes. Not nearly as much as by his laptop or phone, but flying will certainly do.

“Do that slowly, unless you want spit-up all over you,” Dig advises him, with a wry expression no doubt born of experience.

He and Lyla are grateful for a live-in sitter, because they are up to their eyes in Panoptic at the moment.

“We need staff, and fast,” Lyla says. “I didn’t expect to have so much business so soon.”

From the moment they opened their doors, their reputations have brought the city’s elite knocking. They are currently screening the mayor’s communications for threats, and Roy’s day job is guarding Paul Kord, self-made man and CEO of Kord Industries, which the Star Herald insists will revitalize Starling’s economy with their “biotech revolution.”

“Nice guy,” Roy says with a shrug when asked how he likes him. “He ponies up for a lot of free lunches, and I’ve never seen him cranky.” He casts a sidelong glance at Oliver and adds, “My kind of billionaire.”

Oliver arches an eyebrow and hikes Elaine higher on his shoulder. “Cute.”

In a less official capacity, Panoptic keeps a friendly eye on Laurel, who has suffered through some low-grade harassment trying to warn her off a case against the Starling Three-Sixteen.

Oliver is out of action for three months, which is plenty of time for the city to go to hell. Quentin and Laurel struggle to keep the lid on. Dig and Lyla end up with important clients, including the mayor and Paul Kord, whose up and coming biotech revolution is supposed to save the city. Wildcat Grant offers his help to the Arrow. He and Laurel meet when he gets arrested. Arsenal and Wildcat end up with a cool partnership/connection. Never outright reveal their identities; only friends in the mask. Dig, Felicity, Roy, and Thea are Team Arrow now, trying to hold it together.

Laurel the assistant DA is suffering reprisals from crime families and trying to help Quentin with his health issues. She’s also falling for Ted Grant, who has just opened Bridge House and keeps lobbying for second chances for “his” kids.

Grant was the Wildcat once upon a time, but he worked only within the Glades, and he had neither the resources nor the scope of the Arrow. With no List and no advanced research skills, he never got anywhere near the people really in power.  Beating up street thugs was hacking at branches without ever touching the root.

 

 

The night Brickwell and his men steal a truckful of evidence from an SCPD storage unit, Oliver finishes a pair of pearl drop earrings.

“Oh, Oliver,” Felicity says, slumped in her chair in defeat but managing a smile for him anyway. “They’re beautiful.”

“If you like them, they’re yours.”

Her hand comes up to cover the base of her throat. “I–I do like them.”

He scoops them into her palm. Her fingers close around them almost tentatively, and then she zips them into a tiny pocket of her purse. They hardly say another word to each other until the team gets home. By the time they hear boots on the stairs, Oliver has already put away the crystals and silver wire, and instead he is working on replacing the head of a worn-down grappling hook.

Thea leads the way into the lair with a string of curses, and she throws her gloves on the nearest work table.

“Every victory we’ve had,” Dig says, leaning heavily against the med table. “A whole year’s casework. Gone.”

“But what the hell was the point?” Roy says, pacing the other side of the table. “What’s in it for Brick?”

An army.

 

 

After months of “We can’t be together, because I sold my soul to Ra’s al Ghul,” Oliver and Felicity finally get together like this:

His first night back in the hood, a civilian thanks him sincerely, just as they might a military veteran. “Thank you for your service.”

He’s caught completely off guard

Felicity overhears on the comm, and she’s just bursting with pride when he makes it down to the new lair in Panoptic’s basement

And he knows she just heard, but he has this weird urge to tell her about it anyway

“That’s never happened before,” is the best he can come up with

“We’re two and a half years in,” she says. “I’d say it’s long overdue.”

And he sits down, looking a little bemused

And she finds it so endearing she is compelled to come over and kiss him on the head

And ohhh she shouldn’t do that, because she smells good and her fluttery collar brushes his cheek and he can feel her body heat she’s so close

And then she’s gone, back to her console, and he wants to grab her and pull her back

He doesn’t sleep that night

His head is too full, his chest is too tight

The next morning he shows up on her doorstep with the foulest darkest nastiest coffee he has ever brewed - just the way she likes it - plus a croissant

And he awkwards up the works - “Can I come in?”

He can.

And he sits at her kitchen table and tells her that any little good thing that he sees in the world, she’s the first person he wants to tell. He wants as many good things as he can manage, however much time they’ve got left

He’s still a dead man walking, still can’t make her any promises of long happy lives together

“Oliver. I figured out a while back that I’d rather break my heart with you than keep it safe anywhere else.”

So they’re at the table, and they’re going to do this thing. They’re really going to.

They’ve kissed before, light and expectant on the tarmac. She comes around the table and bends down and he sets her glasses aside, and this is different. Slow and sure and utterly deliberate. Most of the sex he’s had in his life was more casual than this kiss.

Three seconds later, she’s in his lap, and he’s all grabby hands and no more hesitation, no more wasted time.

Then she tags a healing wound

And he is ow ow ow

And they have watched Raiders of the Lost Ark together, so she feels comfortable saying, "Well, God damn it, Oliver, where doesn’t it hurt?”

And it makes him laugh, and then they get giggly with happiness, nose to nose with her straddling his lap

When he has stopped laughing, he points to his neck

And gets kisses

To his ear.

And she kisses him.

He just keeps pointing to parts of him and getting kisses

She laughs when he offers up his elbow.

Until she decides to play a different game

And she says, “Would it hurt to carry me?”

He just smiles, because fuck if it hurts. He’s going to do it.

“Take me to my bedroom.”

 

 

But as promised, Ra’s issues a summons.

“Daniel Brickwell,” he says. “You are going to kill him.”

“Am I?” Oliver says mildly.

“Remember your oath. You bear the mark of a sacred purpose, and you break faith with me at your peril.”

The Hood would have put three arrows at Brick’s center mass without hesitation. But Oliver knows this is to warp him, make him what he was to Waller. If he gives Ra’s his soul, that’s it. “I might prefer the peril.”

Ra’s smiles thinly. “Disobey me, and you will die a traitor’s death, Al-Sahim.” His eyes glide across the others - Dig to Felicity to Roy to Thea - and he nods to them politely. “But do not delude yourself that you will suffer alone.”

Oliver rolls his lips together, glances at his team, and then looks Ra’s in the eyes again. “Why Brickwell?”

“A life for a life,” Ra’s says, low and gravelly, “and for wounds, retaliation.”

“There are thousands of murderers walking the streets. Why take an interest in this one?”

“For many years, one of my brothers sought his wife’s murderer and died having never learned the man’s name. But the League remembers. We have found him, and we keep our promises.”

Oliver falls silent. He’s had months to find a way out of this, and still - nothing.

“You are not Starling’s hero,” Ra’s says. “You are my weapon.”

And vanishes into the darkness.

 

 

“What did he mean,” Felicity says down in the lair, “a traitor’s death?”

Sara grimaces. “Ra’s al Ghul believes the old ways are best. Simplest too.”

“Okay, that’s very ominous,” Felicity says warily. “But what is the old way?”

“There’s a sharp stick. And it takes several days.”

Felicity looks slightly nauseous. “What?”

“Impalement,” Dig supplies, crossing his arms. “It used to be a popular punishment for crimes against the ruling power.”

“Imp - _what_?” Felicity echoes at a somewhat more distressed pitch. “Like Dracula?”

Dig looks at Sara. “More like the Ottomans, I’d bet.”

She nods.

Felicity shakes her head. “I don’t know what that means.”

Dig opens his mouth to explain, and his hands come up as if he might add some helpful gestures.

But Oliver holds up a hand, eyes closed. “Do not elaborate.”

“Has the League actually done that?” Felicity demands of Sara. “Like, lately?”

“Not for decades,” Sara reassures her. Then she tips her head slightly and adds, “They don’t usually take traitors alive.”

“Oh my God.”

“So, Brickwell,” Oliver says loudly.

Felicity nods hard, as if to center herself. Then she swallows and says, “Whose wife did he kill?”

The others look at her curiously.

“The Assassin whose dead wife Ra’s has to avenge - who was he?”

Oliver lets out a bitter little puff of air. “Al Saher.”

“Merlyn?” Dig says. “Brickwell murdered Rebecca Merlyn?”

“How many other Starlinger Assassins with murdered wives can there be?” Felicity says, looking to Sara for confirmation.

“Merlyn was long gone by the time they found me,” Sara says. “But that sounds right.”

“This seems like an easy call,” Roy says, sinking into a chair. “For Brick, it’s no holds barred. Lethal force.”

“Nothing else you’ve tried so far has worked,” Sara points out. “You might have had to kill him anyway.”

“He does seem damn near indestructible,” Dig admits.

“I personally am completely comfortable saying the son of a bitch deserves it,” Roy says. “He’s killed three people already, injured dozens more, and if he gets his way he’ll fuck the Glades over hard. Now come to find out, he killed your best friend’s mother back in the day?”

Very quietly, Oliver says, “Don’t talk about Tommy.”

Roy’s shoulders scrunch up slightly, and he looks confused.

“You didn’t know him,” Oliver says without meeting anyone’s eyes. “Don’t try to puppeteer his corpse, please.”

“I didn’t mean to - “ Roy fishmouths for a moment in protest. “Ok, ew. That is not what I was trying to do.”

Oliver nods acceptance. “All right. Point taken.”

“I hear a but coming.”

Oliver looks around the circle at them all. Much more quietly, he says, “The Arrow isn’t in the business of giving people what they deserve.”

Roy raises his eyebrows. “Is he in the business of not getting impaled by batshit crazy cult leaders?”

“Oh, he is,” Felicity says at once. “He is all up in that business.”

Oliver sways back a step and lets his weight fall gracelessly on the railing behind him. “I would very much like to be, yes.”

Roy spreads his hands. “Open and shut case.”

Oliver sighs. “Ra’s asked this of me because it’s an easy call.”

Dig nods, as if that was his first thought too. “Just a few steps down the road at a time,” he says. “You know what it’s paved with, you know where it’s going.”

“I’ve never liked slippery slope arguments,” Felicity says. “Just because I’m aware of gray doesn’t mean I’m going to mix up black and white.”

Sara takes a step toward Oliver. “He asked this of you because you have the most reason to succeed.”

“Like the threat of impalement,” Felicity grumbles.

Sara seeks Oliver’s eyes, and when she catches them, she says, “Save your conscientious objections for when it matters.”

Oliver looks around at all of them again. “Since I started this crusade, I have killed when I had to. But I’ve never gone into a situation intending to leave the target dead. Not since…” He looks at the floor. “Not since Waller.” It cost him something to tell them that. Felicity must know, because she comes over to squeeze his shoulder. “The Arrow isn’t an assassin.”

“No,” Sara says. “But Al Sahim is.”

Oliver looks up at her. “How long can I live by two names?”

“I don’t know. But I know how fast you’ll die with one.”

Silence.

 

 

When Oliver and Felicity are alone, he sinks into her rolling chair and she comes over to stand in front of him.

He looks up at her with a lost expression that could break her heart. “What do you think?”

She sighs. “I didn’t tell you what to do for a reason, Oliver.”

“I’m not asking what I should do. I’m asking what you think.”

She runs her fingers through his hair. “I think you have no good options here,” she says slowly. “So whichever you decide is the least bad, I’ll back you on it.”

He lets his head fall forward, presses his ear to her chest. Wraps his arms around her hips. Sighs out all the tension in his bunched shoulders.

“You’re afraid of belonging to Ra’s," she says after a little while.

He nods against her chest. “The way I belonged to Waller.”

“You never did, though. You couldn’t have.”

“Some of the people I killed for ARGUS…. To this day, I don’t know why.”

“The whole time, you had your own thoughts, and they weren’t hers. You had your own soul, and that wasn’t hers either.”

“For all the difference it made.”

“You’re sitting right here, being a good person, and that didn’t happen by accident. I don’t know where you got this idea that you’re broken and ruined and, I don’t know, tainted by darkness.”

He pulls away far enough to smile at her. “Thank you for making it sound so stupid.”

“Would I be here, if you were a horrible black hole of death and destruction? Would John be here? Would Roy trust you the way he does?”

Silence.

“Maybe we’re all idiots. I guess that’s possible.”

“Or crazy.”

“Or maybe - just maybe, shot in the dark, wild speculation here - maybe I am in your lap because you’re actually a remarkably good person, and because I know how hard you’ve had to work and how much bad you’ve had to crawl through to become him.”

He gives her a long, thoughtful look before he says, “Therefore I’m allowed to kill Brick.”

She frames his face in her hands. “Therefore you should start trusting your own judgment.”

“That’s the metric? Beautiful women in my lap?”

She laughs, and she tugs him into her arms again so she can start rubbing his back. "Trust yourself. Okay?"

“Okay.”

There is nothing lascivious in the way he pops loose two of her shirt buttons, nor in the way he pulls the fabric aside and presses his mouth to the warm, silky skin between her breasts. It’s her heartbeat he wants, that’s all.

She kisses his hair and just holds him for a little while. Eventually, she adds: “Whatever you do, just remember I don’t plan to share you with a man who dresses like an extra from Lord of the Rings.”

He smiles, and they go to work.

 

 

No one agrees on what to do now. Roy wants to outfight Ra’s. Dig want to outsmart him. Oliver wants to outcrazy him.

“How about all three?” Felicity says.

Oliver and Felicity basically do a trust fall. Their original plan fails, and they improvise on the spot, communicating wordlessly. If either failed to run with the other’s plan - and they each had good reasons not to - they would both die.

 

 

Then -

Ra’s takes Lyla and Elaine, and he’s holding them at Queen mansion. “They are my guests, and they will be treated with courtesy. I have no desire to harm an innocent. Please do not force my hand.”

Dig shakes with rage. “Yeah, it’s a terrible position we put you in here.”

Ra’s al Ghul’s expression changes not at all. “If you intend to stop Brickwell, you haven’t much time.”

 

 

The Wildcat, Canary, and Arsenal rush to stop Brickwell with an assist from SCPD, while Oliver and Dig sneak into the Queen mansion. During the fight, a fire breaks out. Under cover of smoke, Dig gets his wife and daughter to safety.

Ra’s is trapped under a fallen beam in the burning Queen mansion. Oliver is ready to leave him to die.

But he sees the sequence of events, sprawling out inexorably before him. Talia at the head of her father’s army. Talia whose word was nothing, who killed even less discriminately than Ra’s, and whose anger burned young and hot and all-consuming. She would force him into her service just as insistently. He’d still be trapped, and she’d be gunning for Starling.

He turns back. Wraps his hands in a table runner from an antique sideboard.

The moment he puts his hands under the beam, he can feel the heat bleed right through the fabric and through his gloves. It’s like taking a pan out of the oven barehanded. He can feel the blistering heat on his face, and smoke chokes him.

He gets his legs under it, lifts. Shaking and straining. It is hundreds of pounds of solid oak.

Ra’s screams when the pressure lifts, and again when he forces himself to crawl out from under the beam. One arm hangs limp and strange - dislocated. Broken ribs, internal bleeding, perhaps a concussion.

But he will live. And he will have Oliver Queen to thank for it.

The second Ra’s is clear, Oliver drops the beam. It slams down hard, embers sparking and leaping, and with little flare-ups in its knottier recesses, it rocks to stillness.

As gently as he can, hurt and coughing and shaky as he is, Oliver drags Ra’s a few feet clear. The man screams again, and it sounds more like rage than pain.

Oliver bends down and says in his ear, “A life for a life.”

In his dark, soot-streaked face, Ra’s’ teeth look very white when he bares them in an ironic smile.

“All debts between us are settled.”

Ra’s grabs Oliver’s shoulder and squeezes with surprising strength. His lip curls momentarily in a snarl of pain, and then he gets control of himself again. “I release you.” Nods deeply. “Mr. Queen.”

“Father!” a woman’s voice yells through the smoke. Nyssa comes sliding around the corner, two black-clad shapes close behind her. “Father!”

Oliver tries shout, “Here,” but it sets off a coughing fit. He tries again: “He’s here!”

As Nyssa comes running, Oliver takes off.

Outside, ash and soot-streaked Felicity is frantically checking exits. “Oliver? Oliver!” She sprints for Oliver when he stumbles out, gets her shoulder under his.

“I’m all right,” he says. Or tries to. What comes out is one hoarse, garbled syllable and then a bunch of coughing.

“It’s all right, I’ve got you,” she says. Into the comm: “Dig, I’ve got him at the east entrance. He’s hurt, bring whatever you’ve got.”

Oliver can’t breathe. He’s starting to feel disconnected from his body, floating maybe six inches above himself. The dark in the treetops is enveloping the burning house. Washing cool and soothing over him too.

Felicity is here.

The dark can take him.

She’ll drag him out again.


End file.
